


Angled--

by velavelavela



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Character Study, Collage, M/M, Post-Canon, Trauma, lio? you good?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23003464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velavelavela/pseuds/velavelavela
Summary: There had been a few moments where he had died.A collage fiction, weaving different aspects of Lio's trauma through a narrative.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	Angled--

There is, was, and will be—perhaps, — delicacy in geometrics. The little wavering triangles, the flame that itched to be burned. As much as it destroyed, it built. Triangles are in things. Isosceles. Scalene. Equilateral. Obtuse, acute, _right_. Building up into the sky in angular strokes, straight lines, flickering like breaths. The feeling of expelling fire was similar, as Lio had realized over the years, to needing to breathe. The aching in your core, the action, the relief afterwards.

He couldn’t do it anymore, and he couldn’t lie and say he didn’t miss it, that deep-seated rush of comfort. No matter where he had been, Lio could’ve felt the comfort of burning, even if it was just at the tip of one gloved finger like a sparkler, the baby triangles fighting one another to rise.

◆

There had been a few moments where he had died.

Lio didn’t exactly know how to explain what he had felt when that happened, but it was something like burning. But of course, he _had_ been burning, crumbling away to ash and short-circuiting and whistling like a kettle, all of his nerves and neurons active and aflame.

But that wasn’t what he felt.

What he felt were the spears of a thousand of the Promare piercing his body, and it was warm. It was like the sharp arrows he often produced, and the pinkishness of the flame surrounded his vision, his body. He was again the dragon, again being ripped apart by rage and pain and fear—

So much fear.

Helpless, Lio had become something large and destructive. The things deep inside of him, the Promare, burned through him and formed him into the dragon, the fear curling his body.

◆

Quiet at night, when the two lovers had separated in their sleep, Lio would awaken, cold in his heart where the bullet had lodged. His fingers would twitch, his foot would curl up beneath the knee of its opposite leg, seeking warmth without Galo, because in his mind sometimes, he didn’t exactly know how to trust anyone.

He used to suffer alone like this, silently rolling into a fetal position, harboring body heat, breathing sharply against the frozen burn in his chest, shivering. It didn’t feel right, when it was this 2am, moonlit world, to ask for help. Lio was an independent person, had been for all his life, and then became an independent person with dependents in Mad Burnish. Lio would fall back asleep eventually and awaken when Galo was getting ready to go to work.

Eventually, it became nightly. Lio had taken to getting up under the guise of going to the bathroom and instead pacing around the living room and kitchen to try and work up a sweat. It felt unnatural to not need to burn. It felt unnatural to be _stable_.

◆

_Where do I put the_ fear _?_

That was the worst part— the diamonds of sharp angle swirling around in his gut. The fear. The soul-wrenching fear. Kray was hurting his family, but Lio was just one man. Lio was outnumbered. Lio was afraid.

_Where do I put the fear?_

You put your fear outside of you so you don’t have to face it alone.

◆

Galo noticed it one night. He was a generally heavy sleeper, out and snoring once his big blue head hit the pillow, but that night he shifted and rolled over when Lio’s breathing began to hitch.

“Lio?”

Lio could feel his eyes without really needing to see them.

“Cold. That’s all,” he replied shortly.

Galo put his arm around Lio, his hand on the middle of Lio’s back, and pulled Lio closer to him. Lio grunted at the sudden movement, but he didn’t complain. There was the sudden body heat, the feeling of Galo’s frame around him.

◆

Safety was a privilege Lio had not always had. As a Burnish, he was ousted. He made his way through life using his natural sense of power to help others. Safety did not inherently come with helping others. There was vulnerability in rearing Mad Burnish. There were two men not much younger than him but much goofier trying to teach him their secret handshake as he laughed. Life. Life was at times like this.

◆

When he died, Lio was separated into shapes. He had no body, no form, but he was all different things. The Promare were chittering around him, blowing fire his way and kissing him on the forehead— what was a forehead, what wasn’t there— like a mother. A sense of home. A sense of belonging. But they shied away slowly, whispering.

And then Galo saved him. His arm ached, his body ached, but Galo’s lips were soft and round and made of flesh.

And Lio saved his family. And Lio never forgot.


End file.
